who is dead thought it well to
utter threats against me, and never more will I, the Opener of
Roads, be threatened by a mortal. Therefore if the King and his
Council seek to drink of the water of my wisdom, it must be in
the place and hour of my own choosing. If this cannot be, let me
abide here in my house and let the King seek light from other
doctors, since mine shall remain as a lamp to my own heart.'"

Now I saw that these words greatly disturbed Cetewayo who feared
Zikali, as indeed did all the land.

"What does the old wizard mean?" he asked angrily. "He lives
alone like a bat in a cave and for years has been seen of none.
Yet as a bat flies forth at night, ranging far and wide in search
of prey, so does his spirit seem to fly through Zululand.
Everywhere I hear the same word. It is--'What says the Opener of
Roads?' It is--'How can aught be done unless the Opener of Roads
has declared that it shall be done, he who was here before the
Black One (Chaka) was born, he who it is said was the friend of
Inkosi Umkulu, the father of the Zulus who died before our
great-grandfathers could remember; he who has all knowledge and
is almost a spirit, if indeed he be not a spirit?' I ask you,
Macumazahn, who are his friend, what does he mean, and why should
I not kill him and be done?"

"O King," I answered, "in the days of your uncle Dingaan, when
Dingaan slew the Boers who were his guests, and thus began the
war between the White and the Black, I, who was a lad, heard the
laughter of Zikali for the first time yonder at the kraal
Ungungundhlovu, I who rode with Retief and escaped the slaughter,
but his face I did not see. Many years later, in the days of
Panda your father, I saw his face and therefore you name me his
friend. Yet this friend who drew me to visit him, perhaps by
your will, O King, has now caused me to be brought here to Ulundi
doubtless by your will, O King, but against my own, for who
wishes to come to a town where he is well-nigh slain by the first
brawler he meets in the cattle kraal?"

"Yet you were not slain, Macumazahn, and perhaps you do not know
all the story of that brawler," replied Cetewayo almost humbly,
like one who begs pardon, though the rest of what I had said he
ignored. "But still you are Zikali's friend, for between you and
him there is a rope which enabled him to draw you to Zululand,
which rope I have heard called by a woman's name. Therefore by
the spirit of that woman, wh